Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Jacob indicated to turn into a road while Gina sat in the car, mulling everything over.
Gina had messaged Brodie through the night, reminiscing about the early days in their careers, partly because she’d struggled to sleep.
She had waited in hope that Briggs would try to call again.
She knew deep down that he was being interviewed or held and she hated that no one was telling her anything.
What had he done all those years ago that was so bad?
She pictured him in standard issue clothes waiting in a cell and she wanted to reach in and pull him away from it all.
She had no idea what he was going to ask her to do or if she could even do it.
A tiny hint of light began to breach the heaviness of the night sky as morning broke.
While Jacob continued driving, she glanced at a photo that Brodie had sent.
They both looked happy all those years ago and Gina couldn’t believe how youthful she looked back then.
After her traumas with Terry, she had been wary of her future but policing had given her a new beginning.
In the photo, they’d been out for a department Christmas meal and were all dressed up.
Gina had danced the night away, clinging to a bottle of Hooch in one hand while dressed up in her sparkling bootcut jeans and an almost backless black top.
Brodie had danced next to her, his reindeer antlers almost getting caught in the tacky tinsel that dangled from the ceiling of the old labour club.
She hated that the years had passed in what felt like a flash.
Without Terry in her life, things were so much simpler then.
‘Any updates, guv?’ Jacob pulled into Justine’s road.
She put her personal phone away and glanced at her work phone. ‘Not yet. I updated the system when I got home last night so we’re all working off the same page. Ah, looks like Justine Crawford is home. There’s a car on the drive, and she failed to call us when she returned.’
Someone in the Crawford household dropped an upstairs curtain.
A neighbour began wheeling her bin onto the road while staring at them as they stepped out of the car and knocked on Justine’s front door.
She answered, her sandy-coloured hair sticking out at the sides.
Gina suspected that she’d been thrashing around in bed all night thinking about their visit.
The woman pulled her white dressing gown around her and tied the belt to cover her pyjamas.
Gina didn’t relish knocking doors at seven in the morning but they had a murder case to solve, and she hoped to catch the post-mortem later. ‘Justine Crawford?’
The woman nodded. ‘DI Harte?’
Gina nodded. ‘We came by last night and your son was in.’
‘Yes, I saw a card on the side but it was really late so I thought I’d call this morning. How can I help you?’
‘May we come in?’
Justine stared at them both for what felt like a very long minute. ‘I suppose. What’s this about?’
‘Yesterday, we discovered a man’s body and we need to speak to you in connection with that.’
Justine grimaced and opened the door wide. Gina noticed that the envelope on the console table had gone. Justine led them into a huge kitchen with an arch that framed an eight-seater dining table. French doors led to a long-landscaped garden with a modern glass-fronted garden room at the end.
‘Have a seat.’ She pointed at the table. ‘I need coffee. Do you want coffee?’ Justine yawned and placed a pod into a machine. It started to spew out liquid at the other end.
‘Yes, that would be lovely,’ Gina replied after smelling it. ‘Black, no sugar.’
‘White, two sugars, thank you,’ Jacob said.
She took the first cup and began making the next drink. ‘So, how can I help?’
Over the spluttering, Gina spoke while Jacob started taking notes. ‘The body of a man called Kain Pickering was discovered yesterday. We also found that the house he’d been living in had been broken into recently.’
‘I heard. Lindy messaged me. It’s such sad news. Was he attacked by a burglar?’
‘Actually, your business card was found at the scene.’
‘Kain is my friend’s brother. I didn’t even know him. Why would my card be at the scene?’
‘That’s what we’re trying to establish. How well did you or your family know Kain Pickering?’
She passed Gina and Jacob their drinks and sat at the table. ‘We didn’t. I’m friends with his sister, Lindy. I know that Lindy had lots of issues with Kain. Lindy probably had my card. Maybe she left it there when she visited.’
‘Did Lindy ever discuss her brother with you?’
Justine tried to flatten her kinked hair with her hands. ‘Now and again. Kain was having a hard time. He’d made their mum’s life hell and his ex-wife wasn’t happy with him either but it was the drink, not him.’
‘Can you tell us more?’
She looked at them both suspiciously before continuing.
‘I know they argued about money. Kain had taken a lot from Maura and it had resulted in some big family confrontation just before Maura died. Lindy still puts the stress of it all down to Maura dying. As for his ex, he started some trouble a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know the details.
Maybe you should speak to Lindy about it. ’
‘Can you tell me where you were between one and ten p.m. on Friday the fourteenth of November?’
She pulled her phone out. ‘I’ll just check my diary?’ She scrolled as she sipped her coffee. ‘I was here, working on a project. I’m a videographer and I edit from home, upstairs in my office.’
‘Was anyone here with you?’
‘My husband was working away and my son, Danny, comes and goes. I don’t keep track of them.’
Gina’s mind whirred away while Jacob noted Danny’s name down. As far as she could tell, Justine and Danny had opportunity but she couldn’t attribute a motive to them. The explanation she’d given to them as to how the card could have been at Maura’s house stacked up. ‘Where does your husband work?’
‘ALV Accounting Solutions. He sets up bespoke accounting systems for companies and that can involve working away for a few days at a time.’
That too gave him opportunity unless they could rule him out through checking his whereabouts with his employers. Gina watched as Jacob glanced at the family photos on the wall and then began accessing the system on his iPad. She carried on speaking to Justine. ‘And he’s working away now, you say.’
‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I don’t know the name of the company he’s working out of.’
Gina cleared her throat. ‘When we came last night, we saw an envelope on your console table with Kain’s name on the front.’
‘Oh, that.’ She walked across the kitchen and took the envelope from a drawer before passing it to Gina.
Gina opened it. ‘A card.’ It had a picture of a man pushing a boulder up a hill on the front with the words, You can do it, written underneath.
Justine nodded. ‘Lindy asked me to speak to Kain because I’ve had a problem with drink in the past. It was many years ago, before I met my husband and had my son.
I just wanted to help. We spoke a few times and he did want to change.
It was just too hard for him. I got him that card and wrote the times, dates and venues for Alcoholics Anonymous meetups.
He wasn’t in a good place when I gave it to him.
He threw it back at me. I tried to help him and now he’s…
’ She inhaled slowly. ‘Maybe I could have done more but he wasn’t ready for help.
I liked Kain. I think there was a good man in there but he couldn’t find his way out. ’
‘So, you did know him well?’
‘No. I didn’t. I hoped to get to know him better and help, but it didn’t work out that way. I’ve only known Lindy for a few months. She started coming to the same yoga class I go to and we clicked. I really like her and we got on.’
Gina glanced at the back wall, covered in family photos all framed in black on a pale-grey wall. One particular photo caused her to look twice.
‘I will need you and your son to come down to the station and make a formal statement this morning. Can you call your husband as we’ll need to speak to him too?’
Justine stared and her brows began to crease. The coffee cup in her hand began to shake over her trembling hands. She placed the cup down. ‘But my husband is working away. My son’s busy and he has nothing to do with all this, and I don’t either.’
‘It will be easier if you come in voluntarily. We need to have your statements on record. A man has been murdered.’
It was as if Justine had clicked that voluntarily might turn into compulsory. She could see Justine’s cogs ticking as she searched for words that weren’t coming out of her mouth. ‘I best, err… I should try to call Craig.’
Gina sat back and waited. Justine placed her phone to her ear and eventually left a voicemail.
‘Craig, it’s urgent. Can you please call me back?
Danny and I have to go to the police station to make a statement.
Lindy’s brother, Kain, has been murdered.
They need to talk to us, you too. Call me back or just come home, okay. ’
‘Can we take your husband’s work and mobile numbers, please?’
Justine reached into the sideboard drawer and passed a card to Gina. ‘He doesn’t answer all the time. He’s probably still in bed.’ She swallowed.
‘Do you have the address of where he’s staying?’
‘No, his company normally book a room above a pub, something like that. I didn’t ask for the name of the place.’
‘Is your son in?’
After creasing her brow, Justine shook her head. ‘He didn’t come home last night. He stayed with a friend.’
‘Do you know who he went out with?’
She shook her head. ‘He has lots of friends and he tends to stay with them when they go to a pub.’
Jacob leaned over and showed Gina what he was looking at on his screen. Craig and Justine’s son had a recent conviction for taking a vehicle without consent.
Gina glanced back at the photo on the wall again. ‘Is that your husband in the photo?’
Justine nodded.
In the photo, Craig Crawford had a leather-plaited bracelet dangling from his wrist. It dangled at the cuff of his blue hoodie where he stood with their son and Justine on a clifftop, each of them smiling for the camera.
It was identical to the blue hoodie found at the scene of Kain’s murder, which put Craig Crawford in the picture for Kain’s murder.